Photo Credit: Brandon

Well this is what those silly pigeons have been up to...

And here’s another one…

Photo Credit: Brandon

I wish Darwin would have worked for the pair that left the egg in the open in the first place!

These photos were taken with my iPhone 4 (through the plastic covering that came with the phone).

Photo Credit: Brandon

!

I took the photo on a country road in New Zealand (ok, most roads are country roads). I was traveling about on holiday with my friend Joanne in 2000 when we found this sign by the side of the road.

Hrm, I’ve never seen an exclamation point sign. I’m guessing it means “warning” or “be alert”. As we continued past the sign, we couldn’t ever see what they were warning us about. Oh well. (I recently saw a similar sign in the UK, though it was a bit more obvious they were warning us about a roadside construction project.)

Holiday Cards 2008

Photos from my travels in 2008. I intended to use these with my holiday cards.

42 Photos

Holiday Cards 2007

Photos from my travels in 2007. I used these with my holiday cards.

37 Photos

Holiday Cards 2004

Photos from my travels in 2004. I used these with my holiday cards.

35 Photos

Tulips 2007

Tulips, Keukenhof, Netherlands, 2007

37 Photos

Holiday Cards 2009

Photos from my travels in 2009. I used these with my holiday cards.

47 Photos

India Flora and Fauna 2009

India flora and fauna from 2009

60 Photos

MIT Parking Rocket Scientist

Rocket Scientist in MIT parking garage

6 Photos

This is an update to my Holiday Cards 2003-2008 post.

Arrgh! *

The first two times were my fault — in adding the metadata, I accidentally reduced their image quality. The first set, I uploaded here because I only intended to display them at a 1024 x 768 resolution.

But for Shutterfly, I wanted the higher quality images since I planned to print them out. So, I did the reasonable thing and recreated the metadata.

But…

Shutterfly doesn’t import the EXIF/IPTC standard metadata from images. What??? Why not?

Sheesh.

So I entered the title/description a third time.

The fourth time was for the photo books I’ve been creating that include all of the images I use on the cards in one place.

*sigh*

I’m kinda tired of entering metadata now.

tintii is a smart selective colour photo filter, highlighting the striking colours of a photo while desaturating the rest to greyscale. Also known as colour popping…

If you know what you’re doing, you can do this all in Photoshop without tintii. Depending how talented you are this may take very little time, or you may not do it because it takes too long. Enter tintii.

Using either the stand alone software (free; it proved to have some stability problems for me), or a Photoshop plugin ($16; I didn’t buy it), you can make the colors pop.

Of course you have to have the right photo…

Here are the before and after images.

Hrm, I’m using WordPress’ built in gallery feature to display them. That’s not exactly what I had in mind, but it works pretty well. (I’d like to focus on the center part of the image, with the flower.)

From Wikipedia on tilt-shift miniature faking is a process in which a photograph of a life-size location or object is manipulated so that it looks like a photograph of a miniature scale model (see also tilt shift photography).

One of the comments on the original post, is that this technique is often applied to poorly chosen photos (hopefully I *haven’t* done this.) Another commenter notes that by having a separate app for this the technique has gotten trendy (probably like HDR and its various techniques).

Below are two sets with the original photo on the left, and after a little manipulation the tilt shifted image on the right (though what I did was more of get a cool effect than accurately do a tilt-shift image).

Photo Credits: Brandon

The complex has a pool, fitness room and package service. It sits on the site of the Old Metropolitan State Hospital in Lexington, MA. The hospital site was converted into a Department of Conservation and Recreation open space. I think it’s the Beaver Brook Reservation, which is the closest DCR site I can find to the site. As you can see from the Google Map the apartment site is surrounded by woods, and what you probably can’t see is a little bit of wetlands. This was my compromise to living in Logan, UT, yet having a “short” 45 minute commute into Cambridge.

Without further ado, click on the image to see the photos…

Photo Credit: Brandon

Avalon at Lexington Hills Apartment

Why?

Here’s a good reason…

Today I received an email:

To more effectively serve our Gallery members, we have adjusted our photo-storage policy to align with storage usage.

How this affects you.

Once you begin storing photos at the Gallery, you must make the following purchases to continue such storage:

• Members with photo storage of 2 gigabytes (GB) or less must make annual minimum purchases totaling at least $4.99.
• Members with photo storage exceeding 2GB must make annual minimum purchases totaling at least $19.99.

Failure to meet this requirement may result in your photos being deleted from the Gallery.

Gee, that’s sorta blackmail. Pay us money or all the photos you put up under the expectation that we’d store your photos forever may disappear. (Though to be fair they probably said they could change the terms of use at any point in time. But, really, who pays attention to that.)

The good news…

You are currently compliant with our new policy, so no immediate action is required on your part.

Gee, thanks.

I usually make a photobook for myself of each year’s cards. Most of the time, if you receive a card from me, all you get to do is see your card.

So, I thought I’d share the albums of all of the individual cards to see which ones you missed–and so you can compare the one I sent you with the ones you might have received. (Once you get to the Shutterfly site, click on the View Album button under the photo or let the slideshow start.)

• 2008, Slideshow
• 2007, Slideshow
• 2006, Slideshow
• 2005, Slideshow
• 2004, Slideshow
• 2003, Slideshow